06/29/2012

Great Expectations and Milton on the end of Ivor Wynne

I write about football on this blog 365 days a year. But all those words, all that noise, really boil down to just 18 days: game days.

I don't get excited for games anymore - it's still work people – but I feel an acute sense of expectation. I see every season as it's own unique narrative and while this isn't the actual beginning - I might argue that the January press conference to announce new head coach George Cortez and quarterback Henry Burris was where 2012 really started – there's little question that today is the spiritual beginning: the tone and direction of the story will begin to be determined tonight.

Here's my main preview piece on the sky-high expectations the Ticats are facing this season, as well as Steve's excellent piece on the history of Ivor Wynne. I'll have more later, certainly. But really, it's all just distraction until tonight now isn't it.

New Hamilton Ticats head coach George Cortez is a voracious reader so it's likely he's already read the Charles Dickens classic Great Expectations. And, if he hasn't, he'll experience it soon enough.

Hamilton has replaced its head coach, its starting quarterback and close to half the roster: Most teams that undergo such a radical overhaul are doing so because they're terrible and they need to rebuild. Not the Ticats. Despite the changes, the Ticats are expected to be instant contenders for the Grey Cup.

That's a tall order for Cortez, who is a head man for the first time after a long career as an assistant in the CFL, NFL and American college football. But the 61-year-old seems unperturbed by the fact his new club will be expected to perform at a high level right from the start.

"While everybody would say that winning a championship is their goal, some teams understand that it's not happening, " Cortez said. "I would be disappointed if we didn't have high expectations."

In addition to Cortez - he replaced Marcel Bellefeuille after an 8-10 season in 2011 and a 27-31 record in three years at the helm - the Ticats also traded for quarterback Henry Burris. The 12-year veteran lost his starting job in Calgary last season and, at 37, will be looking to silence critics who say that his best years are behind him.

"There's definitely a lot of motivation for me. When you feel things are going well and it's taken away from you, it bothers you, " Burris said. "I'm thankful for the way everything happened but I want to make sure I don't experience that again."

The affable Burris, who was acquired at the expense of former starter Kevin Glenn and offensive lineman Mark Dewit, has already won two CFL championships and knows it's the only bar by which he will be measured at this stage in his career.

"I've never stepped onto the field without those expectations. When you've achieved it, when you've reached that goal, you can't accept anything less, " Burris. "For me, it's either Grey Cup or bust."

Other new faces include a pair of Canadian receivers. Andy Fantuz was a marquee free agent signing and Sam Giguère arrived after spending much of the past four years on NFL practice rosters. Fantuz says he isn't focused on long-term goals and says the team can't be distracted by the hype of a new season.

"We're looking to win Game 1, then Game 2, then Game 3 and so on, " Fantuz said. "We don't pay attention to all that noise in the background."

For linebacker Rey Williams, there's motivation to wipe away the failures of last year. Despite advancing to the East Division final after a thrilling victory in Montreal in the playoffs' opening round, the seasoning-ending defeat at the hands of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers was tough to take.

"This is not a rebuilding year: They spent some money on guys like Hank and Fantuz, " Williams said. "It's a new year; slate's clean. But the Grey Cup is the goal."

With a new defensive co-ordinator also on board - the excitable Casey Creehan - Williams will be presiding over a unit that has also been entirely rebuilt.

Sack master Justin Hickman has gone to the NFL and the defensive secondary has yet another new look to it.

"We have new pieces and we're still trying to come together as a team, " Williams said. "I think our talent is going to get us by for a while. As we go through the season, we'll start to jell."

In Great Expectations, Dickens' protagonist feels pressure to achieve his lofty goals and the results are decidedly mixed by the novel's end. Cortez hopes to author a more decisive, happy ending.

"If high expectations are too much pressure, you should probably be doing something else."

The beginning of the end - or, as the Ticats might pitch it, the end of the beginning - arrives tonight.

The last season for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and everyone else, at Ivor Wynne Stadium starts with a contest between the same two teams - the Cats and Saskatchewan Roughriders - which played in the first Grey Cup game held in Hamilton after Civic Stadium was renamed after city parks board chairman Ivor Wynne in 1970.

Many such wistful symmetries and connections, some personal, some universal, will work themselves to the surface through the rest of 2012 as the realization settles upon all of us of not only what is about to be lost but also of what can be retained.

Ivor Wynne reeks of obvious symbols, metaphors and similes for Hamilton's past, present and future. Under the memory microscope that's now set at "High", it becomes clear that the threads tying the individual stories of this city together have so often run right through the corner of Balsam and Beechwood.

After the Ticats are done with it, sometime in November, the stadium meets the wrecking ball which will change its face, but not its place, in time for the 2014 football season.

This is the 85th "season" of sporting activity on the site of Ivor Wynne, which before Civic Stadium was The Stadium, and before that the fields at Scott Park, and before that simply Scott's Farm.

Whatever the nomenclature, the place exhales history, which is why the compromise no one really liked but everyone could live with - building a stadium for the 2015 Pan-Am Games exactly where one was built for the 1930 British Empire Games - could turn out to be a happy accident. This is where so much has always happened, and now still will.

Built for the first major international Games ever held in this country it will be torn down for the newest Games, forming book ends which highlight the essential contradiction of that little piece of the city. It has been, and continues to be, an emblem of both reliable continuity and of unavoidable change.

The surface motivation for constructing the 2014 stadium is the same as it was for the 1928 stadium: for use by outsiders stopping in the city only briefly.

Yet those two Games themselves symbolize change. The first British Empire Games were an exciting new concept, initiated by The Spec's M.M. Robinson, and reflected this country's umbilical connection to the United Kingdom. But the Pan-Am Games, though becoming less relevant and a little stale, are a bald recognition of a Canada far more tightly bound to the United States.

And while the 1930 British Empire Games were meant to echo the 1928 Olympics and celebrate some of its greatest athletes such as Percy Williams and Hamilton marathoner Johnny Miles, there has been no such naïve purity to the discussions around the 2015 Pan-Am Games. This was only about getting a much-needed facility without the city footing the whole bill.

The official mantra is that the general public will have access to a state-of-the-art resource, but for the vast majority that will be true only in the role of spectators at games or concerts.

In truth - although it was rarely mentioned as a direct goal - the stadium, track and playing fields created for the British Empire Games resulted in much wider use by the citizenry. That was partly because the entire British Empire Games were held here while the Pan-Ams bring us only soccer and partly because, since the late 1940s, the grounds have been dominated by its large football stadium.

Most Hamiltonians would be surprised to learn that the stadium they associate mainly, if not only with football, was hardly ever used for elite football until the old Hamilton Wildcats played some games there. They included the 1944 Grey Cup against a Montreal navy team - after the popular Tigers suspended operations for the Second World War. Both teams used Civic Stadium in 1949, the last year before they amalgamated into the Tiger-Cats and unified the fan base.

The merger of the Wildcats and Tigers and their embrace of Civic Stadium as their new game-day home - one team, one stadium - was a rare compromise in a city never known for it. Fittingly, the stadium's life also ends in a compromise, with neither city council nor the football team happy but both realizing it was better than forfeiting windfall federal and provincial stadium capital.

The formation of the Tiger-Cats quickly made Civic Stadium synonymous with pro football and with a team that, in its first two decades, angrily dominated the opposition and Hamilton's sports scene. The tiny, crowded stadium, with its clear sight lines and easy access to players' ears, became a quickly-identifiable metaphor for smash-mouth football and rough-edged audiences. For sports fans across the country, it was impossible to separate the image of Civic Stadium from the sooty industrialism which surrounded it.

But long before football became the leitmotif, and even long before the Empire Games, the neighbourhood had been an important recreational and spectator-sport venue.

The early sporting history of the site probably established the egalitarian, and uniquely physical, tone which has since made Civic and Ivor Wynne unlike any other stadium in this country. It was accessible to everyone, everyone felt ownership, it was a place to participate more than to watch, it presented fewer social and economic barriers than most aspects of early 20th century city life and, significantly, it was always, always, in the shadow of the mills.

It began with casual use of the Scott farm fields for recreation around 1900.

The area eventually became a city-owned park in 1913, administered by the arms-length board of park management. By 1927, when tenders were called for construction of the first 2,000-seat concrete grandstand for the Games, baseball, soccer, junior football and hockey games, plus pleasure skating, track and field meets, wrestling cards, religious ceremonies, and the Police Games were all being held at Scott Park. In 1933, more than 20,000 people attended the Olympic Club fresh-air fund event to participate in games and be entertained by music.

As the Empire Games approached and the stadium capacity was increased to 15,000 the parks board felt obliged to urge Hamiltonians to begin referring to Scott Park as Civic Stadium but the old name died hard, perhaps because the community sense was more about playing than paying to see others play. As late as 1939 The Spectator regularly referred to Civic Stadium as "Scott Park, Hamilton's famed sports centre on the Scott property."

But spectator sport was burgeoning across North America in the 1920s and 1930s and the trend was eventually reflected at Civic Stadium. More than 17,000 people wedged themselves into Civic Stadium for the second day of the Games. A lacrosse bowl was added after the Hamilton Tigers won the 1932 Mann Cup; there was a well-used baseball stadium which helped stimulate the formation of the famous PONY League (still in existence) in 1939; an open rodeo was held on the grounds. And a match featuring famous British cricketers was played there in 1933 even though the local cricket club played at the more central grounds of the Hamilton Amateur Athletic Association, which they had founded in conjunction with the football Tigers.

And, fatefully, in 1944 a proposal for a hockey arena at Civic Stadium, "like Maple Leaf Gardens" was defeated in a city plebiscite.

Still, the major outdoor spectator sport was football and the highest level of it was being played at H-AAA. Even in 1932 with Civic Stadium seating 15,000 and the city still flush with pride over the Empire Games the Grey Cup was held at the crosstown H-AAA between the ancestors of the same two teams which will open up The Final Season Friday night. The Hamilton Tigers defeated the Regina Roughriders 25-6 for their third Cup victory in five years over the Riders.

All three of those games were played at the H-AAA, as were the Cups of 1910, 1912, and 1913. In fact, only three Grey Cups have ever been played in the east end, two after the stadium had been renamed in 1970.

And by then it didn't matter that "Ivor Wynne" didn't cast the same unadorned, vaguely threatening, image that "Civic" did because the template had already been established. This was notoriously hostile territory for visiting teams, a stadium without many amenities, its no-frills essence suggesting the fans didn't require much comfort and didn't want opposing teams to enjoy any.

The Tiger-Cats won their first Grey Cup in 1953, their fourth year of existence, and between 1957 and 1967 played in eight more Grey Cups, winning exactly half.

On the way to those Cup games the Ticats often humiliated the Alouettes and particularly the Argos, who represented larger, far more urbane cities.

With that success and with the pride and sometimes arrogance that resulted from it, a collective sense of "civic" self became evident, fanned by the Cats and their stadium. Small-town David who feared no Goliath. Boulder-sized chips on the shoulder. Intimidation, even danger, on the field and in the stands. Everyone, from dockworkers to librarians, believing they were brothers of the blast furnace.

And all of it was crystallized in the annual rite of passage and mayhem called Labour Day. No single game day in North American sport, outside of perhaps the Indy 500, is so indelibly associated with one place, one team, and one civic character as Labour Day at Civic/Ivor Wynne.

Three generations of Argonauts, pelted by an entertaining and hazardous shower of flying objects, can testify that the stadium has never really lost its roots because many Cat fans cannot separate watching from participating, especially on Labour Day.

Although soccer and high school and minor football are still played at Ivor Wynne, and track was a staple until the late 1960s, since the Tiger-Cats moved in the stadium has been mostly about the town team.

It has been 62 seasons of the proud and the profound, but also of the profane. "Argos Suck" was chanted in unison by octogenarians and toddlers long before the verb became neutered. Fights were common, drinking rampant, and language often ferociously foul. Some parents refused to sit with their children in certain

notorious parts of the stadium, especially with the onset of modern sensibilities in the early 1980s,

just as beer was being legally sold in the stadium for the first

time. For some, perhaps many, that just added to the raw, intimidating image of the city and its stadium.

The Ticat years have featured the monotonous, the monstrous and the magical.

You could not make up unforgettable gems like the 1961 comeback to eliminate the Argos in overtime, Paul Osbaldiston's 54-yard field goal to put the Ticats into the 1998 Grey Cup one year after the then-worst record (2-16) in franchise history nor, of course, the two Ivor Wynne Grey Cups.

The 1996 game - the only Cup game ever held in Hamilton without a Hamilton team - was played on a snow-carpeted field and is considered one of the best in history. Anyone who was there describes it in roughly the same way: "I have never felt so Canadian."And it doesn't get any more supernatural than the first Grey Cup game held at newly-named Ivor Wynne, the first Cup game on the site in 28 years. The 1972 Ticats beat the Roughriders - there's that repeating history again - behind Chuck Ealey, a rookie quarterback who wasn't in anyone's early-season plans, and with a roster considered well beyond its shelf life. Ellison Kelly and Angelo Mosca, two players who were as unforgettably hardrock-Hamilton as the stadium, spent the very last seconds of their proud careers watching 19-year-old local boy Ian Sunter split the uprights to win the Grey Cup.

But despite its intimacy and proximity to the field, the heart of this stadium has always been the human quotient, not the architecture. Generations of Hamiltonians have watched, and lived and died with, football in this stadium, developing and nurturing a distinctive civic persona along the way. Almost everybody in this city has attended at least one game in Ivor Wynne and, in recent years, it has become a deliberate cultural touchstone, a place where locals take visitors for a nutshell understanding of the city. It is where families have grown up and old together.

It has been Hamilton's public square. And it has never lost the egalitarian nature that began on the fields of Scott's farm. Factory managers have oskee-wee-wee'd on hard benches beside their floor help; judges within feet of parolees, professors in the same row as illiterates.

It's fitting, and a little sad, that in the year that Boston's Fenway Park celebrates its 100th anniversary, Ivor Wynne Stadium celebrates its last. The two neighbourhood-rooted stadia have often been compared to each other. They both are intimate, out-of-step and underserviced icons. They both once featured two town teams. They both fell out of favour during long dark eras but were spiritually revived by turnaround events - in Boston, the 1967 miracle Red Sox season and in Hamilton, Bob Young's purchase of the bankrupt Ticats. They both have fan bases which revel in spicy aggression, and both have been strongly threatened with extinction.

Now Ivor Wynne will be extinct, ending the comparison to Fenway and in two years we will begin to compare and contrast the new stadium to the old one.

But for the next four months, we will all be comparing Ivor Wynne Stadium to the only public building, the only institution, the only madhouse, in this country to which it can possibly be compared.

As one of those who grew up on the bleachers, thank you for posting this. Is a ground haunted? I often had the feeling at IWS that there were others watching, and if the crowd willed hard enough, the spirits would lend a helping hand on the field. The feeling of a place is incredibly hard to describe, but easier to remember. Thank you Mr. Milton, for both your description and the triggering of that feeling again. I can't wait for tonight, though I can only be there in spirit.

Wow, Mr. Milton - you truly are the Charles Dickens of sports writers. Sometimes I like to save a link to a great story, or a copy of the story itself... this will be one of those times.

And with regard to Drew's reference to the oft-quoted original novelist - hopefully nobody is saying "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" come season's end, at least not past the first half-dozen words.

A great story on Ivor Wynne! I always enjoy reading about the history of people and places and this was a most enjoyable read, full of information. Not being from Hamilton, it is all new to me but I do remember the 1972 Grey Cup being played at IWS. I was a student at Mac at the time. Looking forward to one last visit to Ivor Wynne some time this season.

Always love reading Uncle Milty's excellent stories so it pains me to correct one of his mistakes in the article. Ellison Kelly did not play on the 1972 Hamilton Tiger-Cats team. He retired after playing his last two years in the CFL (1971 and 1972)with the Toronto Argonauts.

As a guy who grew up going to Ticat games with my family, who played my high-school games there, and who now drives from all over Canada to get back to a game at least once a year - you've touched a special cord within me.